


names

by psych0midget (cominupforair)



Series: Soulmate AUs [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, this is actually soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 19:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21397123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cominupforair/pseuds/psych0midget
Summary: Andrew Spear wore armbands for two reasons.One. He didn’t want anyone finding out about the scars on his arms.Two. The name on his wrist scared people away.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: Soulmate AUs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749052
Comments: 72
Kudos: 832





	names

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a thread on twitter, but then I had too much time on my hands and before I realised it it was over 3k word long?  
so yeah, this is kind of a loooong unpolished twitter thread, I hope you enjoy it anyway :)

People are born with the last name of their soulmate written on their left wrist. Everybody has one. It’s often the first thing people learn how to read. It can’t be erased or modified, it never changes, it just stays there. 

Some people hide their soulmark because they think it’s something sacred or private, they don’t want other people to pry into their personal lives. 

Most people show it off, they think it’ll be easier for them to find their soulmates if everyone can see the name on their wrists. After all, it’s not like finding one’s soulmate is easy. Imagine those who have _Smith_ written on their wrists. There are millions of Smiths out there. Showing off your soulmark can only help speed up the process. 

In 2006 there were no social medias and no websites specifically designed to help people find their soulmates. The founder of the first soulmate-finding website was Allison Reynolds. It is believed she didn’t start off her website thanks to her parents’ inheritance, but with the money she’d won off a bet when she played for the Palmetto Foxes. It is also believed that the creation of the website was inspired by two of her former teammates who struggled finding out that they were soulmates for undisclosed reasons. Now she has a website, an app and more money than her parents ever had, _all thanks to the power of love_ as she likes to say. 

In 2006, however there were no smartphones and no social medias, let alone a soulmate-finding website. 

\--

Andrew Spear wore armbands for two reasons. 

One. He didn’t want anyone finding out about the scars on his arms. 

He didn’t want to think about them or the reason he had them. Drake was dead, he’d died in Iraq while on a mission with the Marines. A bullet through his heart, _there was nothing they could do to save him_, they’d said. 

Andrew had laughed at Drake’s funeral. He’d laughed because all the people who’d shown up were crying for a murderer, a paedophile, a rapist. Cass had thought he was laughing because pain had made him go hysterical, that’s how some people react to bad news, she’d said. 

The day after the funeral, she had adopted him. 

No more Andrew Doe. He was Andrew Spear. 

Months later he’d finally met his twin, Aaron. Their biological mother had overdosed, Andrew suspected it hadn’t been incidental because Aaron smiled when he talked about her death. 

Cass hadn’t adopted Aaron, their cousin Nicky Hemmick had already taken custody of him. But Nicky had also made sure the two brothers got to spend a lot of time together and got to know each other. That’s one of the main reasons why Andrew moved to South Carolina as soon as he turned eighteen.

Two. The name on his wrist scared people away.

As a kid in foster care he’d shown it off. The other kids would see it and then they would cower, run away, they’d stop bothering him. The soulmark protected him. Nobody would dare touch him, not when he was destined to be the soulmate of someone that dangerous. 

The first time Cass had seen his soulmark, she had bought him wristbands to hide it. She hadn’t said a word, but the horror in her eyes had been enough. Nobody had forgotten the day the crime lord of Baltimore had been incarcerated. Nobody had forgotten the horrors he had committed, nor the cruel smile on his lips when he’d been arrested. 

_ Wesninski _ was the name Andrew had written on his left wrist. 

\--

Neil Josten wore armbands just for one reason. 

His father knew what was written on his wrist and Neil needed to stay off the radar. Hiding his soulmark was just another one of his strategies, like dying his hair and wearing colored contacts. Even his name, Neil Josten, was one of his strategies. It was the name he had chosen for himself when he’d been signed by David Wymack and had become one the Palmetto Foxes. 

If you’d ask him, Neil wouldn’t be able to tell you how he’d ended up kissing and doing stuff with Andrew Spear. 

As far as Neil knew, before moving to Palmetto he hadn’t swung. Partly because he’d never had a chance of letting someone in, partly because no one had ever held his interest. 

That was when Andrew Spear had come in and changed everything Neil knew about his sexuality. Andrew Spear was hard kisses on the rooftop, he was fistfuls of blond hair in his hands while he was being taken apart, he was a body shivering against him when Neil mouthed Andrew’s throat. 

It was intoxicating, it wasn’t right, Neil should’ve stopped it before he got too involved. 

But Neil was letting it happen for two reasons. 

One. He was going to die before the semester was over. The Moriyamas wouldn’t have mercy for him. 

Two. Andrew’s last name was Spear. Andrew was someone safe to experiment with, his death wouldn’t upset him, not much anyway. Andrew was not his soulmate. The name on Neil’s wrist was _Minyard_. 

\--

Things started getting complicated when Johnson, the Foxes sub backliner, broke his ankle during the match against Belmonte. He was out for the season and the Foxes remained with only eight players: Kevin, Neil, Andrew, Dan, Matt, Allison, Renee and Nicky. They’d be out of spring championship if they didn’t find a replacement. The ERC had given them seven days. Seven days to find a good backliner before they were unceremoniously kicked out. Not even the Trojans could help them now. 

Neil knew they wouldn’t find anyone, not at the end of February, it was impossible. He wanted to punch the wall, repeatedly. And he did, because otherwise he would’ve punched Kevin’s face. Frustration clouded his mind, making it impossible to think about anything, but the fact that he was months away from dying and he wouldn’t even have a chance of playing again against the Ravens before the Moriyamas or the Wesninskis caught up with him. The Foxes had gotten so close to finals, so damn close. 

On the sixth day they had all given up. Wymack hadn’t cancelled practice, he’d promised he’d find someone. Nobody had really believed a word he’d said.

On the sixth day Wymack barged into the locker room saying that he’d found a backliner. Apparently, he already studied at Palmetto. Coach knew him because he had asked him to join the Foxes during his freshman year, but he’d said he wanted to focus on his academic career. The new fox had played Exy in high school and he was good, very good. 

Also his last name was Minyard. 

Something in Neil’s chest twisted painfully. He should’ve been hopeful, maybe this was the Minyard he was meant to be with. His soulmate. Neil should’ve been hopeful, but his eyes trained on Andrew and stayed there longer than they should have, lingering on the way Andrew’s upper lip had slightly curled at the mention of that name. 

\--

Two days later, Neil walked into the locker room to find Andrew crouched on the floor tying his shoes. Neil hesitated for a second, he’d thought Andrew was still waiting for Kevin at the dorm. Whatever, he must have changed his mind. Neil shrugged and threw a glance at the clock on the opposite wall, they still had 45 minutes before the other Foxes would storm into the locker room. 

“We’ve got time for a smoke before practice, you coming ‘drew?”

“I don’t smoke and I’m not Andrew,” Andrew said without lifting his eyes from his shoes. 

“What?”

Andrew huffed, raised to his feet and held out a hand to Neil. “I’m Aaron Minyard, your new backliner.” When Neil didn’t say anything to him, Aaron looked at him like he was dense. “Andrew’s twin brother?” 

“Neil Josten, starting striker,” replied Neil, dazedly shaking Aaron’s hand. He tried to ignore the way his heart had lodged in his throat and a sick knot had formed in his guts the moment Aaron had said his name. Surreptitiously, Neil’s gaze moved down to Aaron’s arms. 

No armbands, his soulmark exposed. Hawthorne.

It was Hawthorne.

Neil could suddenly breathe easier. 

“He never told me he had a brother,” Neil finally said. 

Aaron’s mouth twisted for a second before he managed to scold his expression. “I’m not surprised, we didn’t exactly grow up together.” 

“No, no,” Neil quickly corrected him. “He told me he had a brother, just not that it was an identical twin. Why are your last names-“ Neil stopped. He must have frowned because Aaron explained without being prompted. “I grew up with our mother, he was adopted by another family.”

“It was _your_ mother, not ours. Are you done now?”

Neil startled when he heard Andrew’s voice. He startled, but he didn’t turn toward him. He couldn’t. Statistically, he knew there were thousands of Minyards in the world, but his mind couldn’t stop going in circles and spinning, spinning, spinning. 

When realization hit him, he felt like he’d been punched in the guts and the air had been knocked out of his lungs. Permanently.

It wasn’t Andrew Spear. It was Andrew Minyard. 

\--

Neil didn’t tell Andrew what he’d found out. He had no intention of ever telling him at all. 

First, he didn’t know for certain that Andrew was his soulmate. He’d never seen Andrew’s own soulmark, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure, but his body still writhed under Andrew’s, reacting to his touch like the goalkeeper’s hands were made to touch him. Him and him alone. 

Neil was a pathological liar, but he rarely lied to himself. It was counterproductive. 

And yet he had to. 

He had to pretend he hadn’t started noticing the way his soulmark twitched when Andrew was around. He had to pretend Andrew’s arms weren’t one of the few places he felt safe in. He had to pretend, because the Moriyamas wouldn’t have mercy for Neil, let alone for his soulmate if they ever found who it was. 

Neil had spent the better part of his life trying to survive, now that wasn’t a viable option, not anymore. If he couldn’t survive them, if he had to die in a couple months, the least he could do was try and save Andrew from the wrath of the yakuza. 

\--

Andrew was stupid, stupid, stupid. He repeated that like a mantra as he ran himself ragged trying to find Neil in the crowd that had gathered in front of the Foxhole Court. 

Andrew was stupid because he’d let himself _feel_, he’d let himself feel for Neil.

He hated Neil Josten, his big mouth and his death wish. He hated Neil Josten, but more than that he hated that he did not hate Neil Josten.

He hated Neil Josten because Neil Josten wasn’t his real name. And he’d just found out from Riko Moriyama on tv. 

Andrew had been smoking on his desk and Neil, fucked-out and indolent on the bed, had been teasing him about how cliché his post-coital cigarette was. 

It all happened in a heartbeat. One second Neil was on his bed, the next a text quickly erased the lazy smile from his lips. And then he disappeared. 

Aaron barged into his room uninvited only minutes later. He was out of breath, like he’d run all the way from his dorm to the Fox Tower. He didn’t say a word, he just turned on the tv and waited for Andrew to catch up with what the journalist was saying. 

_ “Riko, what do you have to say in response to Neil Josten’s comments on your chances of winning the season?”  _

_ _

_ “I say he’d better be concerned with his own chances of being allowed to play Exy now that his father has been released and people will find out who he really is.”  _

_ _

_ “What do you mean Riko?” _

_ _

_ “I mean that Nathan Wesninski was released yesterday from prison.”  _

Andrew froze. He’d probably stopped breathing too because when Aaron shook his shoulders, he gasped like he’d been held underwater so long his lungs had paralysed. 

“Andrew,” Aaron insisted. “Andrew, snap out of it!”

Andrew grasped his brother’s hand to steady himself and took in a long deep breath. Or at least he tried. 

“You okay?” Aaron asked, his hands holding Andrew up as he swayed visibly. 

Andrew shook his head. It was all he could do. 

Aaron’s voice was barely a whisper when he asked, “Isn’t Wesninski the name on your wrist?”

Andrew, unable to say the word, only nodded. He was powerless, helpless. He should be used to that feeling, but it still stung, it still tightened the grip around his throat. 

“Come on then Andrew, we need to find Neil!” 

\--

Aaron went looking on campus, Andrew was looking near the Foxhole Court. A crowd had gathered outside of the stadium, all trying to get a glimpse of Neil Josten, or rather of Nathaniel Wesninski, son of the Butcher of Baltimore. They were shouting. And Andrew was running. His phone pinged in his pocket, but when he flipped it open it wasn’t Neil. It was Wymack. He had already called three times, but Andrew didn’t care. There was also a text from Cass. “_Are you okay darling?”._ He ignored that too. It wasn’t Neil, it wasn’t Neil, it would never be Neil, not anymore. 

Neil was either running or dead. Just thinking about it made Andrew feel sick. He kept running, desperately trying to outrun his mind before it went into overdrive. Andrew could finally understand the appeal a of a good run to clear one’s mind in times of trouble. Neil would be proud of him. 

Ha, Neil, Neil his maybe-soulmate who was probably dead. Ironic. 

But Neil wasn’t dead. 

Andrew had scoured every inch of the campus, looking for a mop of red hair, freckly cheeks and blue eyes. And then he’d looked again, maybe Neil was wearing a beanie, maybe he’d buried his head in a scarf, maybe- just a lot of maybes. And Neil was one of them. 

At some point Aaron had sent him a text. “_Sorry_,” it said. Andrew wanted to hurl his phone to the wall, but his stupid mind still hoped that Neil would call him, telling him to come and get him, drive him home. 

It was already dark when Andrew gave up looking on campus. He should’ve given up earlier, there was no point looking for Neil on campus, he’d probably already ran away. In another city, in another State, maybe in another country. Andrew gave himself time for one last cigarette on top of the Fox Tower before he would go looking for Neil in Palmetto, maybe Columbia, just- somewhere. 

And that’s where he found Neil. When he went up for a smoke, he found Neil crouched, almost folded in a foetal position, on the border of the Fox Tower’s rooftop. 

Andrew’s heart suddenly screeched to a halt at the sight. 

Neil turned his head towards him and just said “Hey”. And Andrew wanted nothing more than to punch him and knock his head off his neck. His skin felt too tight, like it would split, like it would split and then Andrew would wake up because all of it was just a dream. 

“You ran,” Andrew replied matter-of-factly. 

“I didn’t,” Neil rebutted. 

“Yes, you did. You weren’t here when I came looking for you, the entire team went looking for you and you were nowhere to be found, you ran.” 

If Neil saw that Andrew was shaking with barely restrained anger, he didn’t comment on it. The hell raging in his head demanded him he tore something apart, Neil’s face or his own, it didn’t matter, it craved violence, but- but Andrew was distracted by a black cloth landing in his hands.

Neil’s armband. 

“I didn’t run, I went _for_ a run,” Neil punctuated his words carefully. “I promised you I’d stop running and I’m not going anywhere.” As he said that, Neil held out his arm, wanting Andrew to see it, to see _him_. Andrew couldn’t. It was too much, it was too much. 

“Andrew, just- just look” Neil repeated. And how could Andrew say no to him when Neil gave him the truth and just asked him to acknowledge it. His eyes immediately snapped to Neil’s face and then to the wrist Neil was still holding out to him.

Static white silence suddenly replaced the hell raging in his head when he read the name on Neil’s wrist. 

_ Minyard _

“Will you stay with me when the FBI comes?” Neil asked, tentatively. 

Andrew just nodded. That had to be enough for now. 

\--

Neil was in Andrew’s bed when Agent Brown called him to tell him that the FBI had killed Nathan Wesninski and Neil was finally a free man.

Andrew hadn’t needed to ask Neil what Agent Dickface had told him, not when his face had been wracked by a thousand of expressions in the span of a minute. Neil had gone sombre, then angry, he’d tried to check his reaction, but he couldn’t hide the ugly smile that sliced his face in two. Finally, but only when the call ended, he’d started laughing hysterically, his body shaking by the force of it. 

Andrew just stared at Neil as he tentatively sat up. His hands were ready to catch him if he fell, but he didn’t say anything to him, knowing that his words would be superfluous. Neil quietly dismissed his help, leaving Andrew on the bed as he made a beeline to the bathroom on shaky legs. 

In February, the FBI Agents had come to Palmetto looking for Neil and Neil had told them everything he’d known. About his father, his mother, the Wesninski circle. He’d ripped open all the scars of his past and he’d done that to honor a promise he’d made him, because he’d said Andrew he wouldn’t run and he had no intention of breaking their deal. 

He could have run. If he had run, now he wouldn’t have the FBI breathing down his neck, his face plastered on the front page of thousands of newspapers and Kathy Ferdinand exposing his past during her morning show. God knows who she’d gotten the information from when it should’ve been confidential. Most of the fans had surprisingly rallied behind Neil, saying that the crimes of the fathers shouldn’t rest upon the shoulders of their sons, but others hadn’t been as kind. There had been insults, hate, vandalism, more hate.

Neil had faced it all because of a promise he’d made him. Andrew refused to even think that Neil had done it for _him_, for the name he had written on his wrist. 

When Neil came back from the toilet, he was still shaking, unsteady on his legs, but he looked better, less green around the gills. Andrew guessed he’d lost the battle against his stomach and he’d thrown up in the sink. 

Neil made his way towards the front door, but then he changed his mind, turned around and sat next to Andrew on his bed. 

He didn’t speak for a minute, an hour, a day. But he stayed there with his eyes closed, just unconsciously synchronising his breath with Andrew’s. 

“Show me?” he finally said. It was neither a question nor an order, like Neil had struggled so much stringing two words together, he didn’t care how they came off. Andrew didn’t need to ask what Neil wanted to see, not when Neil’s hand was hovering over his wrist. 

Andrew nodded, slow but sure. 

Neil shook his head. “Yes or no ‘drew?” Andrew would’ve laughed at Neil’s attempt to parrot him, but the moment was too heavy.

Andrew didn’t bother answering. He slipped two fingers under the left band and took it off. Exposing everything, his skin, his scars, the pain, the hope, the soulmark. 

Neil’s eyes immediately latched on the _Wesninski_ written on his pulse point. 

Andrew thought he’d learned to decipher the look in Neil’s eyes, but they gave nothing away. They just stared and stared. They would’ve burned his skin off if they could. Andrew had no idea what was going on inside Neil’s head, but he felt the mark throbbing, almost painfully. 

And then Neil whimpered. He probably didn’t even realise he had made a sound, but it was all Andrew needed to know. Enough, it was enough. He reached for the armband, discarded somewhere on the bed, but Neil grabbed his left wrist and stopped him.

He traced his fingers over the soulmark, softly, slow circles on his skin. And then his eyes locked with Andrew. Andrew who had no idea what Neil saw in them, in him, and he still had no idea how his heart could beat that fast when Neil took his wrist to his lips and kissed his pulse point, right where _Wesninski_ was permanently marked on his skin. 

And then he stayed like that, lips just few inches from his wrist, breath caressing his skin. Never once taking his eyes off Andrew’s face. 

“I don’t want to see that name anywhere else, anymore, but on your skin. On your skin it’s fine,” he finally said, voice rough. Neil then straddled Andrew’s waist and buried his head in his neck, exhaling, inhaling. Andrew ran his fingers through the auburn locks and sat there patiently, letting Neil breathe him in till he calmed down. 

That night Neil fell asleep in Andrew’s arms, both their armbands on the floor, their bare wrists pressed together. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to know what you thought of this fic/long thread (especially because it's my first fic for this fandom and I'm kind of scared?) <3 
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](https://psych0midget.tumblr.com/) and/or [twitter](https://twitter.com/psych0midget) :)


End file.
